Economic Revitalization
Tracking downtown revitalization
Since the onset of COVID-19, DSA has been tracking the impact on our local economy. As downtown bounces back, we continue to follow dozens of metrics to trace the path to full economic recovery. A few of these metrics are below.
Downtown Revitalization Dashboard
October 2024 (September data)
Downtown Seattle was the first American urban center to experience the impacts of COVID-19, enduring a sudden economic downturn. As downtown continues to evolve, DSA will publish a monthly Revitalization Dashboard examining key metrics. The data sets provide a comparison point to the same time period in 2019. Additionally, the dashboard will feature notable stories that provide context regarding downtown’s renewal and reemergence.
Please credit the Downtown Seattle Association Revitalization Dashboard for use of charts, data and images on this page.
Total monthly visitors since 2019
More than 2.7 million unique visitors came downtown in September 2024. This represents 98% of the visitors seen in September 2019, and is a nearly 7% increase in visitors compared to September 2023.
Average daily worker foot traffic (Monday–Friday)
In September, downtown averaged more than 88,000 workers per weekday. This represents a 5% increase from September 2023. This also marks the seventh consecutive month in which downtown has averaged more than 88,000 daily workers.
Monthly hotel rooms sold compared to 2019
There were 383,000 downtown hotel rooms sold in September 2024. This figure represents 100% of the demand in September 2019. September capped a strong summer tourist season with downtown hotels selling nearly 1.6 million rooms in the past four months — more than the same period in 2023 and even 2019.
In September, the number of occupied apartment units downtown was nearly 59,000. This represented a 3% increase compared to Q4 2023 and a 15% increase compared to Q4 2019.
Of Note in Downtown
The DSA/MID Clean Team collected 91,811 gallons of trash from downtown sidewalks, curblines and alleys in September. That brings the year-to-date total to 938,723 gallons of trash.
From June through September, the Pike Pine Corridor (First to Ninth avenues, Stewart to Union streets) welcomed the highest level of local visitor summer foot traffic (visitors living within 10 miles of downtown) since before the pandemic. This was a 6% increase compared to the same period in 2023, and represented nearly 70% of 2019’s summer local visitor foot traffic.
Waterfront Park’s crown jewel, the Overlook Walk, is already a huge draw in downtown. The first seven days it was open, this architectural marvel hosted nearly 50,000 people — a 142% increase over 2019’s weekly average.
Coming Up in Downtown
The Oddities & Curiosities 2024 Expo comes to the Seattle Convention Center’s Arch Building for two days of all things weird Oct. 19–20. The expo is expected to bring 15,000 attendees to downtown. At the tail end of its North American tour, this is the original large-scale event featuring dark artists and oddities vendors.
Twice annually, Seattle Restaurant Week serves up 14 days of celebrating our city’s culinary scene with deals across the city. The fall celebration runs from Oct. 27–Nov. 9, with 45 participating restaurants in the greater downtown area.
Seattle actor-turned playwright Katie Forgette brings the world premiere of “Mrs. Loman is Leaving” to ACT through Oct. 27. Dubbed a “delightful backstage comedy,” the action centers on two actors during a production of Death of a Salesman. The human experience takes center stage.
COVID-19 Downtown Recovery Weekly Snapshot
These charts show weekly statistics from March 2020 through the most recent week available. To indicate the level of recovery, data is displayed as a percent of the same metric for the comparable week of 2019.
Notes on Sources
Downtown foot traffic data are provided by Placer.ai and are based on cell phone location data. Each person is counted once per day. International visitors are not included. Subsets of this data in the charts are as follows:
- Office worker presence is estimated based on visits by workers who were present between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays in the downtown neighborhoods with the heaviest concentration of office space.*
- Total visitors includes those who do not live or work downtown. It does not include international visitors.
- Hotel data are based on monthly reports from STR, provided by Visit Seattle.
- Apartment occupancy data are from CoStar. This is reported quarterly but the current quarter data are updated in real-time as new information is added to the database.
- Domestic visitors counts those who do not live or work downtown.
- Total foot traffic includes all visits to downtown by domestic visitors, residents and workers.
- Pike Place Market visitors includes domestic visitors who do not live or work at the Pike Place Market.
*Note that workers who have not visited their work site in the past 90 days are classified as “visitors” until they are regularly visiting their work site at least three times in a one-week period.